Protect our God-given gun rights in Stroudsburg

Saturday

Oct 10, 2009 at 12:01 AM

Editor, the Record:

Editor, the Record:

The Pocono Record's Oct. 4 editorial was deceiving to the public regarding gun ownership and use in this country. The opposition of various gun rights groups to Stroudsburg Mayor Baughman joining New York Mayor Bloomberg's anti-gun organization is not so much an attack on Mr. Baughman's views on guns, as he stated he himself owns a gun, but more of Mayor Bloomberg's anti-gun views.

No one wants criminals to have guns, but in Pennsylvania, a law-abiding citizen may own a gun and carry it on the street for protection with a carry permit. In New York, one can theoretically obtain a carry permit, but few are ever issued. This deprives New Yorkers of their God-given right to defense on the streets where most crime occurs. So, if a law-abiding New Yorker carries a gun without a permit that is nearly impossible to obtain, the gun is considered illegal and the owner subject to prosecution just for trying to protect him/herself. Further, the editorial states criminals commit crimes with assault weapons that cannot be used for hunting. The truth is that these weapons are used in less than 1 percent of all gun crimes and these guns operate exactly the same as traditional-looking hunting rifles and are used for hunting in some states. They are semi-automatic rifles meaning that they load a new cartridge after the preceding cartridge is fired. They are not machine guns as implied. I challenge the Pocono Record and anyone who wants to know the truth about guns and why protection of the Second Amendment is important to go to Gun Facts www.gunfacts.info and Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership www.jpfo.org. Finally, contrary to the naive belief that individuals don't need protection in national parks, crime happens there as well as any other place.